


Holland Nights

by VelvetKordonne



Category: Black Dagger Brotherhood - J. R. Ward
Genre: Black Character(s), Character(s) of Color, Criticism, F/M, Gen, Romance, Urban Fantasy, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2018-10-09 21:19:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10421982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelvetKordonne/pseuds/VelvetKordonne
Summary: "Wrath, King of Vampires, please hear me: Holland, New York is a city neighboring Caldwell. We are a lesser-occupied territory. I repeat: Holland is a lesser-occupied territory. The Omega and his Lessening Society have overrun us and trapped hundreds of people inside the city limits for almost twenty years. And when the Omega is done turning as many people as he can into soulless monsters and populating his army, once they kill everyone else here…who do you think they’ll be coming for next? "The small metro city of Holland has been under lesser control for seventeen years. Meanwhile, Wardian vampires ignorantly exist alongside multitudes of other vampiric beings, continuing to think that their struggle with the Omega is a secret war and that members of their race are the only casualties.After a violent encounter with someone from her past as she survives the lesser-infested streets of Holland on the daily, Brilliant Hollis meets The Sisters, Gage Tillsum, and other blood-drinking comrades. Sistas and brothas from another mother who are well aware of The Brotherhood's existence.





	1. Lesser Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Now y'all know The Black Dagger Brotherhood is the property of J.R. Ward and her publishers. I do not own nor did I create any of established characters, places, objects, etc. featured in this work. This literature is a work of pure fanfiction/critfiction.
> 
> I don't necessarily feel comfortable calling what I'm about to post a fanfic. So I decided to see if there was anything else I could call it. I thought of Critfic. Critfic is described as "taking an academic critical analysis and positioning it within a creative work" (from http://www.sffworld.com/forum/threads/experimental-critfic-essay.32127/]. For the purpose of this fic more specifically, the critfic and criticism tags are used to express me writing a creative work to critique or "talk back" to another creative work, namely The Black Dagger Brotherhood series.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ordinary night for a sister surviving in a lesser paradise.

Night darkened the desecrated urban streets of Holland. It crowded the dim streetlights that weren’t shattered and totaled, reducing their illumination to mood lighting flickering in agitation. The lights that were supposed to make people feel safe only had three settings: Hopeless, ominous, and “God please let make it home alive”. 

Brilliant let the curtain fall back over the window and shifted back into the comfort of her queen-sized bed, dropping her face in the pillows.

From her little bedside radio, Armitage Ray sallied listeners on in that cool and flip but passionate voice of hers. The host of Holland Strikes Back was informant, advocate, and freedom fighter for the survivor’s of Holland, New York.

_Recap, just a little one, for all of you that are new to the shit show of Holland here and find yourselves listening to my show or—God save you—with us in the trenches of the streets:_

_Almost twenty years ago, the Omega found Holland’s largest prison and most dangerous inmates, set up shop there, and never left. Literally, infested and bred an evil army of the undead behind those prison walls and laid siege to the city of Holland._

_Lessers, you say? The Omega, you say? What in the hell is that? Here’s a two-in-one explanation right after our community announcements. Don’t forget to support Holland survivors at designated safe zones and help end the lesser occupation. What you do is critical to the survival of our citizens along with everybody else who got trapped here after the citywide blockade. And keep listening to yours truly, Armitage Ray, bringing the truth and my sister Sweet T bringing to music. We’ll be right back after announcements._

Tuning her radio a decibel lower, Brill looked over her shoulder and eyed the overflowing laundry basket by her bedroom door. It was a fact that she had no clean panties left in her underwear drawer and her selection of good pants was getting scant. Getting to the laundry room of her apartment building required going downstairs and crossing a ground level hall that was open to the street.

No one with good sense who wanted to live left the house after dark. Nighttime was terror time in this city. Yeah, the creepy whites with their dead, pale eyes and bleached hair came out in the daytime and walked among them, leaving every human scurrying desperately from place to place with serious cases of the heebeejeebees. People even still disappeared during the day. But nighttime was show time for the evil that had taken over the streets. 

There was no other word for it but that: Evil.

Brill got up and went into the living room and started shutting it down early tonight.

Like her bedroom, Brill's apartment was forty percent comfort, sixty percent practicality. Comfy cream-colored sofas. Enough locks and reinforcement on the door to hold it in place under long enough for her to escape down the fire escape if someone decided to come knocking with a battering ram. Lots of stuff light enough for her to move but heavy enough to effectively hold down doors and windows in the likely event of an emergency. Not a lot of flash though. The stores might not get the latest flat screens and iPhones that people outside the barricade obsessed over and wasted their paychecks on but life went on. Burglars still robbed and cutthroats still had knives. No use having a place full of nice stuff and painting a target on your back.

She left the light on. Just a small one away from the window, like a night light by the sofa. Old habit. To keep at least some of the breathing darkness at bay. Brill stepped back into her room and got back in bed just in time to catch Armitage slide back on to the air.

_Aaannnd we’re back. As promised, the details: The lessers plaguing Holland are the black-bleeding minions of an ancient evil known as the Omega. And by black-bleeding, I don’t mean sunshine and sista-sista, feel me. I mean literally black blood, like crude oil. The Omega is, in a word, the equivalent of the devil of vampire kind. Not all vampire kind, just so you know. Just the one small group of them that’s giving me and the rest of Holland a literally bloody nightmare that just won’t seem to end._

_Yes, vampires are real. The real kicker is that contrary to the Brotherhood’s belief there isn’t just one type of them. Don’t believe me? I could talk about myself and my own people but that’s not what the lessers are about. They’re about those vampires who are the Omega’s true target, not us. Vampires who don’t do sunlight. Who can only feed off members of the opposite sex of their own kind. Vampires like the Black Dagger Brotherhood who are supposed to keep their mystical evils and its armies of minions to their-gotdamn-selves and away from us! The Brotherhood is supposed to be protecting us, too. I don’t care how self-interested they are. Or how lowly they think the rest of us are. Or how ignorant they are to the fact that—ordinary humans aside, no offense—there are other blood drinkers walking the earth._

_While the Brotherhood polishes their dicks and hides in their mansions preaching about “protecting the race”, meaning their own lily white ass vampires, other races are inheriting their problems and vampire civilians are disappearing left and right._

Like most normal people, Brill wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was out of there. Seriously, a mystical evil and murderous, pale-haired minions? No one leading a normal life wanted to hear that. And Black vampires? Vampire in Brooklyn and Blade was all the experience she had with that. What was more, other races of vampires at large?

But what else could explain all of this? When all ordinary explanations failed, every other explanation—no matter how crazy or how tall the tale—was back on the table.

Brill plopped her head down on the cool side of the pillow. She fell asleep plotting the safest routes to work tomorrow morning. At first light, she’d wash her clothes.


	2. Break the Cycle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A figure from Brill's past finds her. A mysterious power rises within her and saves her life.

Across the office, a pale man in a navy tie was staring Brill’s way.

She swore her boss was one of them. Those lesser things they talk about on the radio.

Brill didn’t like the way Mr. Dodson was looking at her. Out of eyes like polished, dark blue frigid wrapped in the thinnest veneer of human pretense. Brill pulled at the hem of her beige blouse, hiding her discomfort as best she could as she continued to run copies of city incident reports for the Holland Emergency Relief Center like she did most days.

“Good afternoon, Brilliant.”

Feeling a freeze like she’d been doused in ice cold water, Brill spun around and found Mr. Dodson standing there smiling at her. A creepy, pasted on smile that reached his eyes in the most unpleasant way.

“Boss. Can I help you with something?” Brill said nervously.

“Actually, I ran into someone you know the other day. He said to say hello. And asked about Joe. How is your stepfather these days anyway?”

Brill stiffened. She didn’t like that he’d asked that. She hadn’t seen, talked to, or talked about Joe or her mom in years. Last she heard he was in jail and mom was still living lower than a hoodrat somewhere on the west side. 

Brill had the feeling that there was no middle man. The man Dodson had run into was in fact mother’s ex. She thought, _If you ran into him or someone who knows him, wouldn’t you know better than me how he’s doin’?_

“I w-wouldn’t, sir. I’m…not too close with my family.”

“That’s a shame. I’m sure Joe misses you. The guy said Joe asked about you. Maybe he’ll pay you a visit real soon.” The creepy ass smile stretched his white face. “You two can catch up.”

Nodding, limbs simultaneously numbing in terror, Brill turned back to the copier. She pretended she was busy until she felt Mr. Dodson’s eerie, cold presence walk away from her. Then she closed her eyes tight and pressed her palms hard against the loud, heavy machine in front of her until it hurt.

She left all of that behind before the Holland’s lesser occupation ever began. Got a job. Rented her own place, worked, survived, and tried to forget chunks of her past most days. She took several, shallow breaths. _I left it behind._

Or so she had thought.

Her sense of heightened unease only climbed higher when Mr. Dodson kept her late that night. Until the evening rain drilled the streets then passed. Until sundown.

The nightly siren sounded at sunset sharp. The same obligatory announcement blared out over the city.

_“Curfew is in effect. I repeat: For your own safety, curfew is now in effect. Please return to your homes or seek shelter.”_

Out on the sketchy dark streets outside the county building, Brill huddled in her jacket, gathering it around her neck, and started hurrying towards her apartment a few blocks away. 

_Don’t let me be one of those stories. One of those posters on the Missing boards…_ She walked faster. 

Two blocks from work, a rough hand reached out of the shadows and snatched her into the nearest alley, slamming her into the wall. Screaming, Brilliant threw her arms up, blocking the blows that came at her like sandbags pummeling her body. Stumbling left, she heard a meaty thud as the man’s fist slammed into the brick wall he’d thrown her into. 

She had the sense to right herself and look at her attacker. Her blood froze in her veins as her nightmare was realized. 

Her thirty-something and single mother must’ve thought he was handsome and been desperate for marriage. Joe was tall, muscular built like a man who worked out and had God’s gift to his kind but kind of lanky. The thing Brill was looking at now was hulking in the shoulders and roped with muscle under his black fatigues and t-shirt. The popping muscles and the clothes were new, not something she would’ve ascribed to him in the past. It was his face and the shape of his eyes. 

But the eyes were dark with evil and more soulless than they had ever been in one of his schizo episodes. His once brown skin now had an obvious pallor to it. Even in the semi-darkness it was visible, a whiteness like powder. The blood on his hand from punching the wall… it was black. Just like Armitage Ray said. Her mother’s ex-husband was really a lesser. 

And he was here to murder her. 

“Someone! Somebody help me!” Brill shouted. Yeah right. Like that ever worked. Especially in this city. 

Brill ran into the center of the wide alley trying to cut across. Four more pale men walked out of the dark, dressed the same as Joe. 

Joe came up behind Brill and lifted her up by the throat. Choking, held up like a trinket for observation, she clawed at his hand until she couldn’t move her arms anymore. She hung there in the air, filled with a terror she hadn’t felt since the first time she called the cops after he hit her mom. Only to realize that her mother still wasn’t going to leave him and this was going to be her life for the next seven years.

She was incapacitated. Listening to the lessers laugh and talk about whether they should let him strangle her to death or take turns until her neck snapped. Hopelessness descended on her. 

But galvanizing sensation cut into the horror and evil and sureness of death that was dropping its crushing curtain on Brill. It travelled right up her spine in a razing rush. Something that started as a burning light in her hands and slowly suffused her veins and spread into her skin. Joe’s hand around her throat started loosening. She was dying…yet life was spilling out into her skin. Warming every inch of her, keeping death at bay.


	3. The Sistas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter The Sistas-- Sossa ("SOS"), Verne, and Terrah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, the Sisters are not nuns though they do good work. "Sistas" and "sisters" is often interchangeable in many instances in this fic, sharing cultural, gendered, and ethnic significance.

SOS, known as Sossa, pushed up her white ball cap revealing glinting golden eyes. A gilded bat lined in spikes clinked on the wet asphalt, held tight in her hand. The barbell in her tongue clicked on her teeth and her white sneakered foot tapped out an anxious dance as watched the attack in the alley play on.

“Gotta help her!” she said.

"Calm down, Sossa. Before you make me drop this damn veil!” Verne snapped, concentrating on camouflaging the three of them as a forgotten pile of tarp and construction beams in the wet alley. That’s what anyone outside of the veil’s illusion and sensory grip would see anyway, thanks to Verne’s power. She was sitting on the ground, eyes closed and palms together at the center of her body. Wizard that she was, hiding people in plan sight with an audience was still not something you wanted to interrupt while she was laying it on and holding it down.

Growling impatiently, Sossa started to jump over the threshold of the veil but the third Sister in the cropped top, black military boots, and stretch jeans with the scar over her left eye grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.

“Not yet.”

Sossa hissed, “They’re going to kill her, Terrah.”

“We have to know,” Terrah shot back urgently.

“You mean you have to know. Its not something we should be risking her life over!”

Suddenly the woman surrounded by the five lessers… her hands lit up. A star burst to life behind the clouds overhead. 

Beneath her fitted, white driving gloves, the center of Sossa’s tattooed hands burned brightly, pulsing in resonance to the woman’s light. Verne opened her eyes in surprise as the light bathed her. 

Terrah’s expression was fiercely triumphant.

“She’s got the shine... I knew it!” 

Sossa waved her gloved hand. “Yeah yeah—now you know so let’s go.”

To Verne, Terrah said, “Drop the veil. We’re going in.”

“Right-o,” Verne lowered her palms and stood. While Verne straighted her long shimmering tunic, Terrah slid wicked, black-bladed bowie knives from sheathes strapped on her thighs and Sossa swung her bat around in circles so fast it blurred as it went.

The lesser holding the sista by the neck dropped her as the light touched him. Ash floated off him and disintegrated as it met the glow suffusing her hands and spreading up her ams. Her attackers shielded their eyes and backed further away. Crouched on the ground, the woman coughed and grasped her neck while the luminance that had pushed back the lessers started to fade.

“Hey!” Sossa shouted, she and her party approaching.

Blinking the mysterious light of their eyes, the lessers sank into fighting stance. But when they spotted the Sisters stepping out from the diminishing veil, they glanced at each other and eased up albeit warily.

“Well if it isn’t the neighborhood watch," said Omega Flunkie #1. You ladies got apple pies to welcome us or are you just here to flag us for the noise?”

"Not that kinda party, fellas," Terrah shook her head, eyes flashing angrily.

Flunkie #2 snapped, "Shut your hole, black bitch. Where are the vampires? The real warriors."

“Yeah, you’re not the Brotherhood,” said the lesser on Sossa's left.

"Funny. Why does that concern you? Especially seeing as how no lesser that’s run into us has ever lived except for the one we sent as a messenger," Sossa laughed.

The lessers' eyes gleamed with malice at her words. Yet continued to stare down their noses at them. The Brotherhood was the same reportedly. Always and forever underestimating "the females".

"Holland’s streets belong to us," Terrah pronounced. "Go back to the pit of evil."

Sossa stopped spinning her bat and swung it at them. Steel pins shot out of the spikes on the bat and hit two of the lessers like flying shrapnel. Struck in the heart, one of them exploded in a blinding flash and a loud _pop_ before he knew what hit him. Its agonized scream died as soon as it started.

“You only got one of them?” Terrah scoffed as she squared off with two of the remaining lessers. “That weapon of yours is just for show.”

“That’s one more than you,” Sossa returned, batting up again.

“Not for long,” Terrah muttered. The two muscled, pasty critters circling her were easily two or three times her size. Her brown eyes went black as she gripped her blades and eyed them aggressively.

As the fighting started, the lessers’ victim caught her breath, scrambled up, and ran off, disappearing at the end of the alley where she’d been snatched.

“Hey, lady! Wait!” Sossa shouted. But it was too late. She took off like a bat out of hell. Not that they were blaming her. 

By the time the fight was done, each lesser dusted save for one, their vic was nowhere to be seen. The Sisters gathered where the fight had started.

“The tallest one…one that had her by the neck. It got away,” Verne said. The lessers couldn’t fight what they couldn’t see so she wasn’t out of breath or sweaty at all, unlike her Sisters. As the unit’s watcher and also not too much of a fighter, it was her job to hang back. Not jump in. “I’ve got the haze on him but the further they get away from me, the harder it is to keep him from catching up to her.

“Fuck,” Terrah swore. “She’s in trouble. And she’s got stars in her hands.” Which meant she could be useful to the Sisters. If nothing else, she needed to stay with them awhile and train those loaded weapons in her palms for self-defense and the occasional hero work. God knew Holland needed it.

Verne pulled out her phone. “Its gunning for her. For sure. We’ve got to find out where she lives in case she goes back there.”

“Put some of the girls on the watch,” Sossa said. 

“Yeah. Four-block radius,” Terrah agreed, nodding. “Send The Dudez, too.”


	4. Apparition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sisters, Gage, and Igo lose track of the lesser who attacked Brilliant. They must find her quickly before evil does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Igo is pronounced _Eye-go_.

_The Scribe Virgin, the vampires’ so-called deity, isn’t protecting us either. From what I hear, she didn’t even protect her own son from being ostracized by his people or violently maimed by his own father. All that happened to the guy in a war camp no less. So much for girl power. So much for mother. So much for the vampire god, right. Does she not care that the Omega is not only wrecking the lives of her own creations but all life? I guess the Brotherhood learned their ideas of acceptable losses and casualties from her._

_I have with me tonight history buff and professor from what’s left of Holland U. Xavier Pontier._

_Good evening, folks. Glad to be here with a little history on our fair city: Located a couple miles outside of Caldwell—_

Armitage added smoothly, _Caldwell, which is the Brotherhood’s home base—_

Pontier picked up the additional background information and wove it in. 

_Yes, right, right. We’re virtually almost in the Brotherhood’s backyard, sadly for us. Pontier continued, The City of Holland was a completely normal development before Wardian vampires arrived in what is now known as America decades ago. Holland has always been the home of freedom fighters and those who stand against oppression. That is until people started building private prisons here._

_For those of you that have followed along, you know that the Omega used Holland’s private prisons to convert convicts into its army. The worst of the worst: murder, hate crimes, sex offenders, serial killers. You name it. Holland’s prisons got it and now the Omega’s got them. Thanks the PIC for that._

The radio from some blocks back faded from his hearing as Gage Tillsum lengthened his stride as he followed the faint scent of baby powder sweetness and the pulsing in his hands down the darkened alley. He stuffed his hand into the pocket of his long coat and yanked out a length of worn brown true brown velvet. Taking the ribbon in his hands, never breaking stride, he reached up, lifting long wine red and burnished gold stained black locs off his neck. As he tied and tightened the ribbon into a bow around his hair, Igo stared at him speculatively from the corners of his brown eyes.

“Your bow is a little crooked.” 

“So?”

“Its never crooked.” As their quick steps sounded in the virtually deserted concrete jungle, Igo sent him another look and he could’ve sworn the other man was teasing him. Especially with the shit he uttered next. “Want me to fix it for you?”

Gage’s lips pursed briefly but his frown was only a momentary distraction from his determination to reach their destination.

“No, Igo. I don’t.”

_Something’s wrong, _Gage thought. His instincts fired off anxiously in a way he’d never felt before.__

__“What’s your hurry tonight, man,” Igo frowned. He checked his Glock as they walked, picking up his step to keep up._ _

__“Something’s wrong,” Gage said, aloud this time, and walked even faster, falling into a sprint._ _

__A few alley’s later, they slowed as they came up on three people, all female judging by the shape of them._ _

__“Finally,” Terrah said. She flipped one of her recently cleaned knives once into the air, grabbed it mid-fall then slid it in the sheath on her left thigh._ _

__Gage cocked an brow with a wry look at the warrior. “You rang, ladies?”_ _

__“Our stretch of the hood isn’t just a hop away, you know,” Igo said. “And we’re covering the Donahue and Lafayette watches now too.”_ _

__The youngest, a teen named Sossa, stacked her hands and leaned on her bat like it was a cane._ _

__“We got a little situation, guys.”_ _

__Verne, who had been standing with her fingertips pressed together and her eyes closed, lowered her arms and said, “We’ll give you the quick version. After that, hurry. It just disappeared from my senses.”_ _

__“I lost the lesser that’s chasing our girl.” Verne said grimly._ _

__As the rain renewed its lease over the lesser paradise known as Holland, Gage silently prayed that this situation wasn’t as bad Verne made it sound. They’d lost too many and too much already. That was true no matter how hard they continued to fight._ _

__The rain started up again as Brill ran blindly for her life. There was no telling how long she ran before she made it home._ _

__She hoped someone would hear her panicked, pounding footsteps pounding up the stairs in her apartment building but no one’s door opened. No one poked out their head to see what was going on. No one got involved. With wet hands that slipped, she tried to close the door. A hard clamped on the frame, jerking it so forcibly it flung open and knocked her back a few steps. Joe, horrendously pale and dead-eyed, walked through her front door, body coiled and ready for violence. Brill screamed as the first blow came at her._ _

__At fist he just hit her everywhere he could and she swung back, warding him off and pushing him away. Each blow was like getting hit by a sandbag. A hard punch to the head sent her slamming backwards, down, into the floor. Something cracked in her right arm. Then he focused on her face. The pain was tremendous and she wasn’t tracking what he was doing to her anymore._ _

__A woman tread soundlessly on bare feet around the edge of the living room where she was being beaten to death. She was adorned in gold ornament. Scarves of soft fabric trailed and billowed around her brown body. As she looked right at Brilliant, her eyes turned red. Brown. Then gold. Serene, gilded orbs of pure light shone inside her the centers of her hands. The light spread from her palms to the rest of her body. She glowed a gilded radiance, a god. Unearthly. Powerful. She held out her hand to Brilliant._ _

__Tides made of that same tangible luminescence rose inside of Brill’s veins. Just like back in the alley when Joe choked her. Her hands heated and, as she raised her heavy arms, willing her stunned brain to work, she saw the shining in her palms._ _

__Suddenly Joe screamed. He was pulling away from her as ash peeled away from him. What came off of him disintegrated as it met the light coming out of Brill’s hands. She thought that if she was going to die, the radiance felt warm. Comforting and powerful._ _

__Reaching, Brill grabbed Joe’s face and held on as tight as she could, blinded by the light pouring out of her._ _


	5. Survivor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gage and Igo arrive to find Brill near death.

Gage and Igo burst over the threshold of the apartment’s wide-open door. 

Too late. 

They nearly trampled over the prone figure lying there. Heart skipping a beat, pushing aside the image of the woman’s battered, bloody face, Gage knelt down and put two fingers where he should find a pulse in her throat.

“She’s gone, Gage. Leave her.”

“No.” If she was gone there wasn’t much he could do about it. Gage wasn’t accepting that. If she was dead, he'd feel it. Why this urge was throbbing in his chest, he didn't know. Besides…

Igo threw up his hands and huffed. “Don’t be a bleeding heart. What—”

“Shut up!” Gage hissed. He listened closely. Put his ear to her mouth. Tugging off one of his fitted driving glove revealing a marble-sized ball of light in the center of his tattooed palm. He laid that inked, glowing hand on the unmoving woman. The light in his palm flared larger and throbbed weakly in time to palpitations in her chest. “Heart’s beating. She’s breathing.” 

“At death’s door. Let’s go, Gage.”

Gage ignored him. He placed his hands, glowing at the centers, over her heart.

“I’m going to heal her,” he said with barely half a glance over his shoulder at Igo. “Help or stay out of my way, brotha.”

  
  


Light-years later, Brill’s eye cracked open. Through the one that wasn’t completely swollen shut, she saw two men over her. One hung back by the door, sharp eyes watchfully surveilling the landing and the stairs when he wasn’t looking at what the other one was doing. 

Were they paramedics? Police? The latter she doubted but they also didn’t look like EMTs. She wasn’t even sure Holland had a hospital anymore because she had promised herself and striven never to end up needing one. Until now.

“She’s in a lot of pain,” said the one kneeling over her. His long locs were pulled back away from his face by a brown bow at the nape of his neck. He didn’t seem to notice her regain consciousness, staring instead at his hands over her body. At first she thought he was holding a pen light.

But it was in his palms. It radiated softly behind the bars of strangely familiar symbols tattooed on his skin that marked him from fingertip to wrist and likely up his arms beneath his sleeves.

Brill knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she hadn’t imagined anything earlier. The luminance that had shone in her own hands was real. Just like what she was seeing now.

“Its like that when a guy shows up and breaks your face in. I told you to leave her. There’s nothing we can do for her.”

“There’s nothing _you_ can do. I’m staying.”

After a stunned moment, the other brother said, “The lesser wouldn’t leave her here. Not alive. So where is it?”

“I wondered the same thing.” 

She couldn't move. Everything hurt, especially her face, but Brill struggled to speak.

“A…wo…myn.” The croaking coming out of her throat was just decipherable and both men looked at her.

“Is she conscious?” said the one at the door incredulously. 

“S-she was here… She had red…no…gold eyes…shining stars in her hands…”

And fangs.

Above her, they looked at each other. Was what she’d said crazy? Did they think she was out of it?

“Was there a Sister here?”

The brother standing by the door shrugged. He stepped closer, standing over her now. “Would more than explain how she survived the attack.” He looked down at her with a kind of clinical interest. “Where’s the lesser who attacked you? Which Sister killed it?”

The moment her mind touched the memory of Joe forcing into her apartment, she started seizing and choking. _It was me… I did it…._ The mysterious woman had woken something inside her. Something that killed Joe.

“Chill, Igo!” Bending closer, the brother kneeling next to her said softly, “Sh, sh. You’re good. Easy. We’ll talk later. You’re going to be okay.”

Something in his face, maybe it was those miraculous hands. She knew he wasn’t lying to her, that he meant the words he spoke. The light they shared somehow proved it. Brill closed her eyes and let the healing radiance carry her away.

~

Xavier Pontier, Armitage, and the history lesson on the radio rolled on.

_Then the blockade went up._

_That’s right. The city is shut off from the outside world and under lesser control. Seventeen years now. No one in. No one out._

_But the Brotherhood gets their HEA right? While we’re bleeding. We’re bleeding. Right in the Brotherhood’s backyard and they can’t see the forest for the trees. They can’t see their darkness, spreading, for the shadows._

_Look at Holland. It’s ridiculous for vampires to think their war with the Lessening Society is such a huge secret._

_So either they truly believe that or they just don’t care that we’re cleaning up their mess. Hear that, King Wrath?_


	6. Sunlit Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brill comes out the other side of the lesser's attack with Nurse Gage at her bedside. The Sisters and Gage aren't the only reasons she survived and Brill begins to come to terms with her power.

Brill came to again the next morning, in her bedroom and bathed in cheerful rays of early morning sun. That terrible night was over and her eyelids weren’t both nearly swollen shut anymore. Her radio played on low, Armitage’s station of course. 

He was there. The one with the locs from last night. 

Underneath his long coat that was now draped behind him on the back of a chair from her kitchen, he was wearing a loose-sleeved dress shit with fitted cuffs, brown and red vest, and raw umber-colored slacks. She watched him sleep for a minute before pushing herself into a sitting position against headboard. He heard the bedclothes rustling, the mattress shifting. He sat up, awake, as she settled. Pretty shaped brown eyes. Sturdy frame. 

“Good morning.” 

Brill resisted the urge to gush. Jesus. Who wouldn’t want that soft, deep, rich voice greeting them in the morning. 

“I hope you don’t mind. I used a few towels from your bathroom. Do you need anything? Ice? Damp cloth? Breakfast, I can--”

“What’s your name?” Brill asked. Then she worked her creaky, sore jaw.

“Gage. Gage Tillsum,” he said.

“And the other brotha who was here.”

“That’s Igo. You remember him? Us, last night?”

“Yes. I remember, I came around for a little while you…worked on me.”

Fluffing her pillow, Gage sighed, a weariness showing on his face that wasn’t just physical, brow furrowed slightly. He looked disturbed on her account.

“The trauma of an experience like that can mess with your head. Doesn’t matter how your body is holding up. So try not to go too fast right now, okay.” Brill nodded. “Speaking of, how are you feeling?”

She rotated her shoulders. Touched her face. Winced. “It doesn’t hurt as much anymore.” Which was impossible. Brill knew she’d been hurt. Bad. Joe had undoubtedly meant to beat her to death. _Yet here I am,_ she thought. Miles ahead of any healing process the ordinary human body was capable of.

“I’m not going to lie. I prefer you be much more comfortable but I can’t heal you any faster than what I’ve done already.” Gage put a hand on her forearm. 

At once, Brill could feel the swelling going down in markable degrees. “How are you doing that?”

“Healing abilities. I’ve never been more glad that I paid attention when I was taught.”

This wasn’t like any healing she’d ever had.

“Taught when? Where?”

Gage smiled. “A long time ago. In the Motherland. My home. Still, I might have to find someone whose skills are better than mine to completely heal you.” 

“Honestly, I’m glad you’re here.” Underneath that sincere feeling, there was no way she could miss how sincerely attractive Gage was as she gave him a discreet once-over.

“For real?”

“Who would want to wake up without a friendly after such a unfriendly…encounter.”

“I’m a friendly face?” he raised an eyebrow.

Brill smiled broadly and nodded slow. “Mm-hm.”

“For all you know I could be some goon up to no good,” Gage scoffed lightly. 

Brill shook her head and smiled at him. 

“I’m an excellent judge of character. And if you were going to hurt me you would’ve done it by now.”

She needed to keep talking, to keep herself grounded. Before all this new stuff sent her mind flying like a balloon lost in the wind.

“Who were those women? The ones fighting in the alley.” 

“The ones who sent me and Igo after you and that creature. People call them the Sisterhood. Sun warriors.”

Motherland? Sun warriors? All of this was ordinary to him? The crazy thing was it was all clicking with her too. And Gage knew the ass-kicking women from the alley. Hindsight was fifty-fifty and Brill knew now that the beating she took could’ve been avoided if she’d stuck with those ladies.

“Tell me your name,” Gage said.

“What…?”

“What’s your name, beautiful?”

Beautiful? Brill pursed her lips. Who the heck was he talking to? There was nothing beautiful about what Joe did to her. She didn’t feel beautiful and she was sure she didn’t look like it either. So he needed his eyes checked or he was talking to someone else. She answered anyway.

“Brill.”

“That short for something?”

“Brilliant. Hollis.”

Sobering a little, he hesitated only a second before asking, “Do you know the person who did this to you?”

Her stomach turned. “My mother’s ex. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“There was dirt…a foul dust all over your clothes and the floor around you.”

Brill saw Joe turning to ash, disintegrating right before she lost consciousness. Pulled back into the sensations of the attack, she shut the memory down quickly.

“You didn’t get in a dust up with him outside, did you,” the brotha said knowingly, brown eyes steady on her face. Watching unflinchingly for something. “Either one of the sisters did your attacker in and left you at the scene in your condition—which none of them would do—or…”

_I did it. I turned that evil thing to ash._ Brill’s heart leapt into her throat. She’d protected herself and that was a relief. But she’d done it in a way she’d never imagined, never been conscious of having the ability or power to do.

He nodded, seeming to see the answer written all over her face and in her lack of ready response.

“But we can talk about that later.” He paused, then looked serious. “Its true. What Armitage says on the radio, Brill. The Brotherhood. The Omega. All of it…me too. I can do this because of my heritage. I’m a blood drinker. This will be easier if you accept that.”

“I think…I think I have,” Brill said.


	7. Bait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brilliant recovers from her injuries and learns more about the kind of vampires who saved her...while stumbling into a direct encounter with a Gage's thirst.

Gage left her to rest while he checked in with his people.

In bed while he was gone she, Brill closed her eyes tight. _You’re safe. You survived. The memory can’t hurt you if you stay calm._ She remembered…

Joe on top of her, fists swinging. Brill grabbing his face and hanging on tight. As the brilliance destroyed him from the outside in, he looked up and saw her.

She crouched over Brill and hissed in Joe’s face like a wildcat, revealing sharp fangs behind those full pretty lips. Brow grooved and face thinned out, a glowing-eyed African goddess showing her aggression. She glared as Joe screamed and disintegrated. A mother protecting her child. A warrior watching an enemy justly vanquished.

Then she looked down at Brilliant. Her features resumed that smooth regality but her expression was no less fierce behind it.  
Brill saw herself standing in an alley, raising glowing hands. A sister. A warrior. Ready to fight. She stared down at her hands, at the stars shining bright in her palms.

Light to purify its corrupt darkness.

 

~

“Brill,” Gage said softly. His voice caressed her as he spoke, like the hard, gentle finger curled and stroking down her cheek. “Just give me a minute or two. I’ll have you mended soon enough.”

Sleep claimed her again as she was bathed in that warm steadily radiating light. Gage was talking to her as she felt her pain ease away.

“Its dangerous here. Brill…if you want to leave I can make it happen. The Sistas can do that. Just say the word and I’ll…”

She felt herself nodding but didn’t remember what she said.

The mending took three hours. By the time it was done, Gage looked exhausted. Even so, he left again for a few hours anyway.

She was glad when Gage came back. There was so much to ask.

Still sore, stiff, and bruised but fully aware that she was in worse condition last night when Gage and Igo found her, Brilliant dragged herself out of bed. The hot shower she took loosened her up. It washed away the physical remnants of last night and had her feeling all shades of blessed.

Refreshed and keeping it together despite what had happened, she put on a loose, long thin sweater and jean shorts. Brill went through the living room and skirted round into the kitchen.

The late morning was quiet and Gage was sitting on the sofa watching the door.

“Whoa, hey, Miss Lady, what are you doing walking about?” he said, sitting up like he was about to direct her right back into bed.

“Fixing us something to eat. It’s the least I can do.” She paused in pulling some things from the cabinet. “You do…eat, right?”

Gage’s mouth twitched.

“I do.”

“Good,” she nodded stiffly. Brill believed in the unlikely, especially given the state of Holland. But that didn’t mean she ever expected to be feeding a vampire lunch in her apartment.

 

~

“Are you…?” Their empty plates were in front of them on the living room table and Brill was ready to get some answers to her questions.

“A vampire?”

“Yeah,” she forced herself to say.

“Yes.”

The only thing that came to mind when she thought of vampires was cold, paled out white skin like whitened marble, flammability in sunlight, and a rich liquid diet. Yet here Gage was. Sitting on her couch during broad daylight. The blinds were drawn and the curtains were closed, yes, but he’d gone outside twice. His skin didn’t look pale at all nor did he smell singed or look like he’d caught an unwanted toasting.

“Armitage. On the radio. She hinted that she isn’t…”

“Human,” he supplied.

“Yes.” She says there are different kinds. “Is she…? Are you like her?”

“Yes, she is. And yes I am. Armitage and I descend from same line of blood drinkers, shifters, and magicks. It’s complicated.”

At the same time she was turning that over in her head, Brill was starting to realize that the longer she was around Gage the more she felt a strange stirring inside of her. For some reason, she wanted him to see her neck. Wanted him to think about it. Gage licked his lips and shifted his hips against the couch.

“Is it okay that I came back? I am still only a stranger to you,” he said.

“You’re a gentleman.”

He raised a black eyebrow. “You are sure about that?”

She nodded, pointing at herself. “Like I said: Excellent judge of character.” He was up in her house, full good Samaritan mode, like a decent person would. But somehow she still wished he’d be less like a gentleman. She couldn’t help the small things she did to see if he was looking at her.

Cutting her eyes at him, even if some of it was a touch of wariness. Leaning across his body and grabbing his plate to stack with her. Arching her neck as she did so, revealing the long brown stretch of skin and brushing her fingers across it nervously.

Gage pressed himself harder into the sofa like he was pushing further into the cushions to put space between them.

“You should really take up wearing turtlenecks, crocs, and sweats around me.” His voice was lower now. His tone darker.

“Really. Why?”

“Your presence…your nearness… You raise the hunger in me,” he breathed.

Brill’s eyes flashed at him. “So it’s true that you drink…blood.”

“Yes,” he whispered. She felt that one whispered word through her whole body and shivered from the warmth of it. Gage’s pupils dilated and, when he said it, she saw the flash of fangs between his lips. He swallowed convulsively. Seeming to be trying to control his face from making a feral expression of hunger and single-minded intent.

She touched her neck again, brushing her fingers over quickly heating flesh. She cleared her throat, starting to feel achy there and between her legs. This wasn’t just curiosity, morbid or otherwise.

This was a desire she didn’t understand outside of the movies she had seen in her time.

Gage pulled a breath through his lips and his gaze lifted from her pulse to her eyes.

“Brilliant. Do you want me…to taste you?”


End file.
